Europe’s Post-Copenhagen View of Obama

The Copenhagen summit on climate change taught Europe a hard lesson about its trans-Atlantic partner. Great hope had greeted President Obama when he replaced George W. Bush at the American helm, but a year later Europeans are realizing that Mr. Obama is going to have a very difficult time delivering on his agenda.

During the Copenhagen summit, the American media portrayed President Obama as a global dealmaker, shuttling from leader to leader trying to broker various compromises. What Mr. Obama was really doing was a lot of fence-mending, because the United States was seen as the principal obstacle — and Mr. Obama as the footdragger-in-chief — that prevented any ambitious agreements from being signed.

Certainly the developing countries, led by China and India, were behaving stubbornly, but for good reason. The United States is by far the largest per-capita polluter in the world. Each American generates about 45,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, twice as much as the average European or Japanese, and 4 to 10 times more than someone living in China, India or any other developing country. China is close to the U.S. in terms of total carbon emissions — each emits about 25 percent of the world’s total — but it has four times more people.

The U.S. demanded that the developing world join in making drastic cuts, but the poorer countries cried foul. As one Indian official said, “First you do virtually nothing to cut your emissions, and then you threaten us [the developing world] with drowning from global warming sea level rise if we don’t cut ours. It won’t wash.”

So it was known all along that the U.S. had to offer something ambitious to start off the bargaining. In a real sense, the success of Copenhagen depended on the United States — that is, on President Obama.

Instead, what Mr. Obama offered was a bait-and-switch. Leading up to Copenhagen, Europe already had committed itself to reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020, and offered to go to 30 percent if the U.S. matched it.

That was a generous offer, especially considering that Europe already has an “ecological footprint” that is half that of the United States because it has done far more than the U.S. to implement conservation and renewable technologies.

American negotiators countered by offering to reduce carbon emissions by 17 percent — but stipulated that it would be 17 percent of 2005 levels, whereas most other countries used the benchmark of 1990 levels. The difference is substantial: In effect, America was agreeing to reduce carbon emissions by only about 4 percent of 1990 levels.

When the U.S. negotiators made this offer, the shock that echoed around Copenhagen was palpable. Everyone knew its ramifications — mainly that China, India and the developing nations would walk away from any significant agreement. So when Mr. Obama finally arrived in Copenhagen, he was in complete face-saving mode.

Another sticking point at Copenhagen was that the developing world insisted, quite rightly, that the developed world should pay for much of the poor nations’ carbon mitigations, since the developed world had caused most of the pollution to begin with.

Here again, Europe stepped up with an initial offering of up to $15 billion a year for the next decade to help developing nations cope with climate warming. Yet the Obama administration didn’t offer anything close to that amount.

A consistent pattern has emerged, where the world has seen more symbolic gestures than accomplishments from the Obama administration.

Even the White House’s biggest achievement has been a disappointment. President Obama signed an executive order to increase U.S. motor vehicle mileage standards to 32 miles per gallon — but not until 2020. That’s a level that European and Japanese cars, which already average 40 m.p.g., have long surpassed, and even China will soon achieve.

Why has President Obama been so unwilling to match his lofty words with concrete deeds?

One major reason is the U.S. Senate. Mr. Obama needs 60 of the 100 Senate votes to get climate policy — or any other measure, like health care. This means that the 40 Republican senators joined by a single Democrat or independent can block any measure.

Mr. Obama isn’t delivering because he can’t deliver. The majorities needed for major policy changes are too high a threshold, even for someone with Mr. Obama’s political gifts.

Following Copenhagen, Germany’s environment minister, Norbert Röttgen, had some stinging criticisms for President Obama, as well as for China’s leadership. “We are experiencing a lack of results and an inability to act, triggered mainly by the United States which, in the case of climate protection, is no longer capable of leading,” he said. “China doesn’t want to lead, and the U.S. cannot lead.”

Europe, on the other hand, presented itself as a unified bloc at the summit, with clear goals and a solid strategy. It already has done much to reduce its own carbon footprint. But Europe cannot solve the problem alone. Since its share of global carbon emissions is only about 14 percent, Europe could stop emitting CO2 tomorrow and global warming would still be catastrophic. Said Mr. Röttgen, “On this issue those who emit the most have the greatest power.”

So one of the unfortunate lessons from Copenhagen is that even an Obama-led United States cannot be counted on as a reliable partner. Europe is trying to step into the leadership vacuum, but without the world’s largest national economy and per capita polluter making greater efforts, success is in jeopardy.

A provocative, remedy-based perspective on the joint complexities of economic stability and ever expanding technology.–Kirkus Reviews

“Hill hits Silicon Valley darlings like Uber and Airbnb alongside the former online black market Silk Road, right-to-work laws, and factory robots all under the umbrella of “naked capitalism.” He explains how the rise of the “1099 workforce” is not limited to Silicon Valley; more and more traditional jobs in fields like manufacturing are turning to contractors to perform the same tasks full-time employees used to do. In addition to costing workers in benefits and safety nets, misclassifying workers as contractors costs federal and state governments billions of dollars annually in lost tax revenue.” ―Washington Monthly

“For anyone driven crazy by the faux warm and fuzzy PR of the so-called sharing economy Steven Hill’s Raw Deal: How the “Uber Economy” and Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers should be required reading… Hill is an extremely well-informed skeptic who presents a satisfyingly blistering critique of high tech’s disingenuous equating of sharing with profiteering…Hill includes two chapters listing potential solutions for the crises facing U.S. workers…Hill stresses the need for movement organizing to create a safety net strong enough to save the millions of workers currently being shafted in venture capital’s brave new world.” ―Counterpunch

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“Steven Hill’s book Raw Deal is a red-faced, steam-out-the-ears indictment of sharing apps. Yet Hill offers a pragmatic, almost post-ideological solution: “individual security accounts” for workers. Companies that use independent contractors, or offer scant benefits for employees, would have to add on a certain percentage of their pay as a contribution to those accounts, which would cover health care, unemployment insurance, and more. There’d be a mechanism ― and a requirement ― for companies to contribute to the long-term well-being even of workers who aren’t on their traditional payrolls.” ―Boston Globe

“Raw Deal is a book for its time. Steven Hill perfectly captures the anxiety of the American worker in today’s increasingly digital economy. Hill presents some compelling ideas, the most important being something he calls the Economic Singularity. In this unfortunate tipping point, the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few results in economic implosion because the 99 percent can’t afford to buy anything the 1 percent has to sell. The United States is turning into a nation of 1099 workers who eke out a living driving cars, renting rooms and running errands for people who apparently have better things to do with their time. Throw in self-thinking computers and obedient robots, and there won’t be any work left for plain old Homo sapiens…Hill proposes that we offer 1099 workers a new safety net consisting of tax deductions, individual security accounts and multiemployer health care plans. All good ideas.” ― San Francisco Chronicle

This book is a must read for those concerned about how technology is disrupting the way we work and eroding the social safety net, and how policy makers should respond to ensure that the growing number of workers in the “gig” economy earn adequate benefits.—Laura D’Andrea Tyson, UC-Berkeley and former Chair of the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers

“Steven Hill’s groundbreaking book on the part-time, unstable ‘Uber Economy’ shows how a new sub-economy becomes a work of law-flouting regress undermining full-time work. Remote corporate algorithms run riot!”— Ralph Nader, consumer advocate

For many years, Steven Hill’s analysis, commentary and activism have helped shape our understanding of the U.S. political economy. His latest book, Raw Deal is A riveting expose that shows with alarming lucidity what Americans stand to lose if we don’t figure out how to rein in the technological giants that are threatening the American Dream.–Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation

In Raw Deal, Steven Hill documents in frightening detail the ways in which new forms of work promise to plunge US workers and their families into further economic hardship, risk-assumption, and instability. Fortunately, Hill does not simply anticipate catastrophe; he closes the book with an informed call for institutional reforms that would lessen the negative consequences of these potentially dangerous forms of work. Anyone concerned with US working conditions – whether American workers, worker advocates, labor market scholars, or policy-makers – must read this book .— Janet C. Gornick, Professor of Political Science and Sociology, Graduate Center, City University of New York, Director, LIS: Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg

Praise for Expand Social Security Now

“Read this book before you vote. Few issues are more important to your personal economic future. Steven Hill shows what’s at stake, and he offers solutions that Americans of all stripes can agree on.”—Robert B. Reich, author of “Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few”

“Steven Hill has written a barn burner of a book. Or perhaps I should say ‘myth buster,’ because he systematically demolishes the false justifications for slashing Social Security. In place of misplaced animus and misleading arguments, he offers a strong case for dramatically expanding America’s most successful domestic program in an age of rising inequality and widespread financial insecurity.”—Jacob S. Hacker, coauthor of “American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper”, Professor, Yale University

“Steven Hill has written a vigorous defense of Social Security, the country’s most important social program. While most political debate in recent years has focused on ways to cut Social Security or privatize it, Hill goes in the opposite direction and argues for a robust expansion. Hill proposes a Social Security program that would be adequate by itself to support a middle-class retirement.”—Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and author of “Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People”

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Praise for Europe’s Promise

Financial Times: “Steven Hill is a lucid and engaging writer. He makes you sit up and think.”

The Economist: “In a new book, Steven Hill extols the European social contract for better government services. Life in Europe is more secure, he argues, and therefore more agreeable.”

Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker: “Like a reverse Alexis de Tocqueville, Steven Hill dauntlessly explores a society largely unknown to his compatriots back home.”

Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs: “Europe’s Promise is a timely and provocative book . . . the “social capitalist” policies of European countries represent best practices in handling most of the challenges modern democracies face today.”